Standard television video displays are sized to display 4×3 aspect ratio video images (referred to hereinafter as “standard” images). Video images, however, often have an aspect ratio (i.e., width to height ratio) that is wider than the standard 4×3 aspect ratio, commonly referred to as “widescreen” images. For example, the motion picture industry commonly distributes motion pictures having an aspect ratio of 14×9 or greater.
An area of concern with widescreen images is their compatibility with the millions of televisions in use that have standard 4×3 aspect ratio video displays (referred to hereinafter as “standard” video displays). A standard image is approximately 33.3% taller than a 16×9 widescreen image of the same horizontal width. Accordingly, when displaying a 16×9 widescreen image in its entirety on a standard video display, approximately 25% of the video display's display area is unused. Typically, black bars are displayed in the upper ⅛ and the lower ⅛ of the display area, which is a display format known as “letterboxing.” Widescreen images having other aspect ratios, e.g., 14×9, also use only a portion of the video display's display area with black bars above and below the widescreen image. Since letterboxed widescreen images do not use the entire display area of a standard video display, many viewers find that the displayed widescreen images are too small for comfortable viewing. In addition, many viewers are distracted by the black bars.
A common method of eliminating the black bars associated with letterboxed video involves displaying only a 4×3 portion of the widescreen video images. Thus, a standard video display displays a 4×3 “window” of the larger widescreen image. To create the 4×3 window from a widescreen image, a device such as a flying spot telecine is employed. The flying spot telecine has a viewing window with an aspect ratio of 4×3. Typically, an operator moves the window to track the center-of-action on the widescreen image, commonly referred to as “pan and scan,” to crop more or less of the left and right hand portions as necessary. The “cropped” version of the letterboxed video is then distributed for display on standard video display.
Current video standards such as MPEG-2 support automatic pan and scan. In automatic pan and scan, the center-of-action tracked by the operator is encoded with the widescreen image on the media containing the widescreen image, e.g., on a digital versatile disc (DVD). Video players that support such standards are capable of decoding the center-of-action and displaying the 4×3 window of the widescreen image selected by the operator for display on a standard video display.
Many existing video players, however, do not support automatic pan and scan. In addition, a large amount of media containing widescreen images is not encoded with pan and scan information. Accordingly, methods, apparatus, and systems are needed to display widescreen images on standard video displays without letterboxing that are not subject to the limitations of the prior art. The present invention fulfills this need among others.